You Recognize a Genre by Playing, Not by Looking

A label is not an experience

Classification seems to offer a simple answer: name the genre and you know what kind of game you are looking at. That confidence does not last long. The encyclopedic genre definition among the sources for this proposal places gameplay, rather than visual or narrative differences, at the centre of classification. It adds an important qualification: boundaries are open to interpretation, and a work may belong to more than one genre. This tension is not a flaw to erase; it is a clue to how video games should be read.

An image may suggest a period, a setting or a mood. A story may direct attention towards particular characters and conflicts. Yet neither, on its own, explains which actions are allowed, which obstacles recur or what decisions players must make. To approach those questions, we have to move from appearance to rules, and from rules to the specific experience of play.

Rules do the work of classification

The source on genres distinguishes the way a game is played from elements such as its setting or the time in which its fiction takes place. This distinction is a tool for reading, not a universal law. It helps us ask which activities organise a work and which are secondary: exploring, solving problems, competing or following a narrative sequence, for instance. We need not assume that every title has only one answer.

The entry on adventure games offers a useful, if encyclopedic, example. It describes investigation, exploration, puzzles and interaction with characters as genre features, alongside a relative emphasis on story over reflex-based challenges. This list outlines a set of tendencies, not a formula every game must satisfy. The same source notes the variety of stories and the borrowing of elements from other genres. Rather than treating a label as a verdict, it is better to treat it as a hypothesis to test against the work.

Story and image matter too

Giving gameplay analytical priority does not make presentation irrelevant. It means separating questions. Rules help describe what players do and under what constraints; images, sounds and story help those actions acquire meaning. The same activity can feel different depending on the represented space, the information provided or the way a game invites interpretation.

The history of video games page published by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya organises its material by period and presents the 1970s as a stage of emergence. Narratech’s page, in turn, lists examples of milestones from later years. Together, these resources show the value of arranging history by date, but they are not enough by themselves to explain how the rules of each work changed. A chronology provides orientation; analysing the experience is a different task.

Context changes what we can claim

Video games are not encountered only as abstract objects. They are played in particular places and circumstances, and they are known through materials that survive unevenly. The public history of video games page at historiapublica.es broadens the frame towards the active image and its forms of interpretation. RetroPause has also argued in an earlier article that telling this history requires asking what has been preserved. These are useful editorial propositions: a catalogue of works is not the same as a complete reconstruction of reception or practice.

The sources available here do not provide manuals, attributable testimony or detailed records of play with which to compare particular versions. They therefore cannot establish how specific groups experienced a game, or precisely reconstruct its instructions or conditions of use. They do support a cautious question: which part of a classification comes from documented rules, and which from later conventions for talking about a work?

Reading categories without turning them into memories

Genre labels are useful for finding our bearings, making comparisons and discovering related works. They become less reliable when mistaken for a complete description or for a shared memory that has not been documented. The adventure-game entry also reminds us that features move between genres and that readers do not always agree on boundaries. That disagreement is no reason to abandon classification; it is a reason to explain the criteria being used.

A sound analysis can begin by describing actions, constraints and goals, then consider how presentation and context shape their meaning. It can also distinguish what a source states from what an editor infers. Saying that a work combines traits is not evasive: it may be more accurate than forcing it into a single box.

Genre, in short, works better as a question than an answer. Looking provides orientation, reading adds context, and playing—or having reliable documentation about how a game was played—allows us to examine the rules that organise the experience. When that evidence is missing, acknowledging the limit does not impoverish video game history. It prevents us from confusing what a work offered with what we later learned to remember about it.